


Sprouts

by renquise



Category: Motorcity
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-16
Updated: 2012-08-16
Packaged: 2017-11-12 07:23:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/488221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renquise/pseuds/renquise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Kanebot is lying on its side, both of its weapon-arms blown off. Its sound-box must be completely mangled, because the only thing it gives off are occasional buzzing chirps, thick with static. Its red optical input blinks in and out like morse code. So far, pretty standard, if slightly unnerving. What is really weird, though, is the organic material that has taken root inside the box, curling into the circuitry, bright green veins feeding off the power source, and which is, oh yeah, currently curled around his ankle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sprouts

Dutch had heard plenty of rumours about Motorcity's mutant rats, and even had the chance to tangle with a couple of them on his first days down here, but this is weird, even for Motorcity. 

"Okay. You can let go of my ankle, now." Dutch says, trying not to panic and drop his paint cans and generally lose his shit.

The Kanebot is lying on its side, both of its weapon-arms blown off. Its sound-box must be completely mangled, because the only thing it gives off are occasional buzzing chirps, thick with static. Its red optical input blinks in and out like morse code. So far, pretty standard, if slightly unnerving. What is really weird, though, is the organic material that has taken root inside the box, curling into the circuitry, bright green veins feeding off the power source, and which is, oh yeah, currently curled around his ankle.

"Euuugh," Dutch says eloquently, shaking off the—plant? Plant. The thing drops off at once with a muffled thump. Okay, maybe he should watch his step, from now on.

Dutch turns to go and gets as far as the end of the block before he registers the quiet scraping noise.

When he looks behind him, there's the bot following, gamely limping along on its busted thrusters. The limp grey-green growths trail after it, dragging along the ground. 

Dutch, very manfully, does not shriek, but walks faster.

Every time Dutch looks back at it, wondering if he should run, the bot freezes and scuttles over to the nearest alleyway to hide. 

"You are the least stealthy bot in the world, dude," Dutch calls back when the bot knocks over another garbage can in a bid to hide inside it. It's kind of hard to take the bot as a serious threat when it has the trash can lid on its head and looks totally ridiculous. 

Dutch should be more paranoid about it— for all he knows, the robot might be sending his every move back to the KaneCo public safety officers. The sensible thing to do would be to disable it, to smash its circuit board so that it's out of action. But the bot doesn't do anything, doesn't even call for backup from other bots. It just follows Dutch at a distance, occasionally making more staticky buzzing noises and bumping into things. 

Dutch turns back around and ignores the clanging as the trash can lid goes rolling down the street.

When he wakes up in the morning, the bot is waiting outside his door of his makeshift room. 

"Uh, hi," Dutch says, for a lack of anything better to say. The bot buzzes and bumps up against Dutch's leg like a cleaner-bot trying to negotiate its way around an obstacle. If it's trying to blow Dutch's legs off, it's kind of terrible at it.

"This is such a bad idea," Dutch mutters to himself, and grabs his painting things. The bot follows, somehow managing to trip over its own dragging tentacles.

It turns out that the bot is pretty good at holding extra paint cans on its frame. And at boosting Dutch up to some hard-to-reach places. In any case, it's still hanging out at Dutch's door every morning when Dutch goes out to scavenge some breakfast. Dutch doesn't know exactly what it runs on, but it seems to like sticking its tendrils into Dutch's one functional electrical socket. 

A few weeks later, Dutch sits down, crossing his arms and looking the thing in the eye. Optical input. Whatever. "Okay, man. If we're going to do this thing, we're going to do it right." 

The bot buzzes at him.

Maybe it was time for him to go live with people again, considering he was talking to a bot with a plant sticking out of it. 

"I'm not going to hurt you, okay?" Dutch says. "I'm just going to make sure you won't hurt me, and then I'll let you go, all right?" Who knows if the thing even understood him. Most of the Kanebots are just made to understand simple commands: detain, chase, attack, defend.

Whatever it understands, the bot doesn't protest when Dutch tales its cover off. The inside is a mess, but all Deluxe systems are built along the same lines, and Dutch can trace the circuitry back to the power source easily enough, even if he has to wiggle his fingers through tough grey ligaments to get to it. Even with the power off, the organic material inside glows a bright green, its pulsing tendrils sunk deep into the machinery. "Buddy, you are the weirdest bot I have ever seen," Dutch says. "Or maybe you're the weirdest plant I've ever seen. Or both." 

Dutch is no expert programmer, not by Deluxe standards. He knows the basics, enough to make systems for his creations, but that's about it. Making an interface for a machine, though— that, he can do. Maybe he could even reprogram it to protect him, just in case. Or maybe program it to find his parents, tell them that he was okay. But that was way too much of a risk. 

As far as he can figure, the plant-thing melded with the rudimentary AI in the Kanebot to communicate with the Kanebot frame, and he doesn't want to mess with it too much. He isn't going to change the bot, Dutch tells himself. He wasn't going to be like Deluxe, reprogramming people for whatever was easiest, most convenient. 

It was weird to be working with the bot powered down, actually. Too silent. Dutch rolls up his sleeves and gets to work.

It takes a couple of days to make sure that the aggression functions of KaneCo's programming are stripped out or turned to protect him, and Dutch is completely freaking exhausted by the end. He hasn't done this since that first glorious art blitz when he first came down here. Dutch really hopes he hasn't re-initialized any kill-all-Motorcity-dwellers protocols, because he isn't in any shape to be running away from homicidal robots. 

Finally, he connects the power source again, and the bot stirs. 

The tendrils twitch, and then the sinewy appendages flex and bunch, growing larger than ever before, and Dutch feels his insides go cold in panic. Holy shit, what if he had managed not only to put its aggression protocol back online, but also put it in control of a mutant plant thing? Here lies Dutch Gordy, killed by his killer monster robot plant thing and his inability to leave well enough alone. A-plus, self.

The bot's corded appendage reaches out, a small grey hand coalescing out of the mass. Dutch scuttles back, only to be trapped against the wall. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. 

The appendage creeps forward and then pats him on the ankle. It's clumsy and unwieldy, but unmistakeable. _Hi._

"Hey. Oh man, I am so glad you aren't going to go on some crazy rampage," Dutch babbles, his shoulders slumping.

Maybe it's just because he's been alone for too long down here, but the bot's short buzz sounds like the audio equivalent of eye-rolling.

The next morning, Dutch wakes up to find that the bot has found his paint stash and has managed to spray a line of paint down its body (along with a couple of the walls). 

Oh my god, that's freaking adorable, Dutch thinks, and kicks himself. 

The bot limps up to him, boosting itself on its arms and buzzing, and rolls the empty paint canister towards him. With everything else, Dutch had completely forgotten to fix the sound box and the thrusters.

Repairs, then. And after that, a really cool paint job. It's just another art project, right? Right.

The bot bumps into him, cheerfully smearing wet paint all over his leg. 

—

It takes Dutch awhile to move in with the Burners, even though Mike had offered him a room at the garage straight off. Even with his mods and his paintjob, Roth is still unmistakeably a Kanebot, and the others might have said that he was a security threat. He kind of feels like a heel when he tells Roth to stay safely inside his place when he meets up with the guys, though. Roth's arms droop, and he gives a sad chirp before hovering over to Dutch's bed and burying itself in the covers. 

"Stop that," Dutch says. "Oh my god, where did you learn to guilt-trip?"

Roth huddles further into the covers, looking thoroughly unrepentant.

“Fine! Fine, make me feel terrible. You are the worst partner ever. I’ll be back soon, okay?”

As it turns out, he shouldn't have worried at all.

"Uh, Dutch, there's a Kanebot with really weird ideas about camouflage hitching a ride on your ride," Texas says, whirling his gun-chucks around. 

Dutch’s stomach drops out, torn for a moment between scolding Roth for taking a risk like that, and giving in to what was clearly inevitable. He settles for shooting Roth a look. Roth immediately looks up and to the side, looking as innocent as possible. No help whatsoever.

"Uh, yeah. About that. It's cool! He's a good one!" Dutch babbles. "Um, guys, this is Roth."

Roth chirps.

"Is... what the heck is sticking out of the engine?" Julie says, completely mystified. 

"What _is_ it?" Chuck says. He doesn't look worried at all— in fact, he's leaning forward to look at Roth more closely, pushing his bangs aside.

“He’s..." How did you explain Roth? "Well, I’m not a hundred percent sure what he is exactly, but he’s all right?” Dutch says lamely, shrugging.

Mike looks around at all of them, and then holds his hand out to Roth. "Hey, there's always room for another refugee from Deluxe, whatever they are," he says.

Roth looks confused, but pats Mike's hand. 

By the next week, Dutch finds Texas trying to explain arm-wrestling to Roth, with Mike and Julie providing dubious advice. 

It's Chuck, though, who is fascinated by Roth. Dutch finds him chatting away at Roth while he codes something, the same way Dutch bounces ideas off Roth when he's working. (Roth is a pretty good listener.) 

It takes a few days, but Chuck works up the nerve to ask whether he can look at Roth’s coding. Dutch can't help but say yes, because Chuck is so serious about it, stammering out that he'd really like to take a look, but if that's too invasive, that's cool, whatever Roth is comfortable with.

"I'm warning you, man, it's all kind of McGyvered and rigged together in there, and it's really not elegant. My coding is nothing like yours," Dutch says. 

The tips of Chuck's ears flush, but he doesn't freak out or anything, just looks quietly pleased. "Are you kidding? Makeshift stuff is the best. So much more interesting. “ He reaches a hand out to Roth. “Hey, dude, how's it going? Do you mind if I go under your hood for a bit?"

Roth makes one of his happy/affirmative noises, landing in Chuck's lap like world's most overgrown housecat. (Well, not that overgrown, compared to Motorcity's housecats.) 

"Whoa, he really isn't that heavy," Chuck says, petting Roth's frame. Dutch is kind of glad that he isn’t the only one to do that, despite the fact that Roth doesn't have any pressure receptors in his outer box. 

"Yeah, exactly, he's mostly made of that ultra-light polymer. He's a little back-heavy, since that's all stuff from down here, but it balances out his planty bit in front—" Wow, Dutch, way to sound intelligent and technical. "—so it all works out."

There's something weirdly intimate about letting Chuck look inside Roth's chassis, like letting someone look at your practice sketches. Dutch winces when the cover reveals some of the really rough-looking stuff from when he first started working with Roth. "Uh, yeah, sorry, some of this stuff's really old, I haven't gotten a chance to streamline his systems in awhile." 

Chuck has a wide grin on his face, his long fingers flitting over his screens. "No, no, it's really neat, actually. Man, you didn't even have a workshop yet when you were doing all of this, did you?"

"Nope. Spent most of my time freaking out that I was going to short out something. I still don't know exactly what's going on in there."

Chuck peers inside at the tracery of green. "Oh man, this is so cool. All the organics interfacing I've done have been nanoaugs and other stuff like that, but this is like, the organic component and the electronic component as symbiotic systems. That’s so neat."

Knowing Chuck, "other stuff" was sure to be ridiculously complicated and highly experimental. Dutch tries really hard to think of a way to say "you should show me your mods" without sounding kind of inappropriate, and fails utterly. 

"Yeah, he's... well, he's pretty special," he says, instead. It's supposed to be a joke, but it comes out all dweeby and fond, much to Dutch's horror. Chuck's hands stop for a second, and he looks over at Dutch, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. 

Chuck taps out a few more lines of code and slides the screen over to Dutch, looking at him expectantly."Is it cool if I give him a little something? It's nothing big, just something to make the communication between the bodies smoother and help him communicate more easily— just like, translating whatever's going on in there into body language and helping him understand us." 

Dutch scrolls down. He can’t help feeling a little jealous of Chuck's fluid coding, the neat lines of logic that cut to the simplest, most elegant solution. Some of it is beyond his understanding, but— "Are you trying to make Roth understand high-fives?" he says, grinning.

Chuck looks embarrassed, his shoulders hunching up, but he smiles back at Dutch. "Uh, yeah. That and a couple of other things. But yeah. Is that dumb? Sorry, I don't want to mess with your work, but he's just really, really cool."

A "couple of other things," right. In just ten minutes, Chuck had already managed to solve the dexterity problem and made the system ten times more efficient. 

Roth gives a chirrup as he powers up again. He lets Chuck slip his casing back on, and some part of Dutch wondered what subsumed programming makes Roth trust the rest of them so much already. 

It's weird, after so long, to not feel like he would be better alone.

"Hey, buddy, everything okay in there?" Dutch says, holding his hand up. 

Roth looks at it, at Dutch, and at the hand again, then reaches up to place his appendage on Dutch's hand with a careful little clap. Chuck grins and grins, and Dutch tries not to do something really undignified like hug both of them and say, oh my god, my baby's growing up.

—

Every so often, Roth gets dinged up in fights, and it's no big deal. He's a tough little thing, just like the rest of them, Motorcity resilience through and through.

This is different, though. 

"Hang on, buddy, you're going to be okay," Dutch says. He can hear his voice shaking, and his hands hover over the really, really big dent in Roth's side. 

Chuck drops to his knees beside him, his fingers flying over his screens. "The rest of the guys have the bots under control," he says, his eyes darting over to Roth, who waves feebly. 

"How bad is it?" Dutch says. He's got his own screens open, but he's having a hard time parsing the running lines when there's sparks coming from the holes in Roth's casing. He doesn't know if opening Roth up would make it better or worse— the dents in the box might catch on the circuitry or on the green ligaments strung through them, and god knows what he might rip out. Roth's casing had taken most of the brunt of the shots meant for Dutch, but a few had cut right through the case, leaving the smell of burnt-out circuits and leaking sap. Dutch knows that Roth can't feel pain, isn't coded for it, but it still makes him sick to his stomach.

Chuck bites his lip. "It's— it's fixable. I've got that backup of his data, and we can replace the hardware, but everything else—" He shrugs helplessly, tapping at his screen as if it might tell him something different.

Dutch's heart feels like it's stuck in his throat all the way home, and he keeps on glancing back at Roth, carefully strapped into the gunner seat. They end up having to cut off the casing, and Dutch wills his hands to stay steady as he traces the laser-arc around Roth's limp appendages. The rest is just careful replacement work, nudging away the dimmed green tendons and filling in the gaps in the data and hoping that he isn't breaking some vital connection that makes Roth who he is. 

When Roth wakes up with a woozy chirp, Dutch's knees almost give out from the rush of relief, but there's Chuck's hand on his back to steady him.

They had to scavenge a box from one of the fallen Kanebots, and it's weird to see Roth back in the standard slate-grey of Kanebots, one of his appendages half-curled inside it. Julie helps Dutch bandage it up, probably to make him feel better, since they're not even sure if it'll help or not. 

Later, Roth hovers up to Dutch with his good limb wrapped around a box of paint cartridges, which he drops in front of Dutch before arranging himself in Dutch's lap. He's already gotten a head start, a single stroke of paint partially covering the serial number on the casing. Dutch rests his forehead on the cool curve of his case.

"Hey, buddy. You okay?" 

Roth gives a soft trill.

It doesn't take long to do a first coat, but Dutch goes over it a few times, making sure that all the edges are covered. Chuck sits down quietly beside him, running diagnostics in the background. Dutch leans up against him with a sigh, putting down his airbrush. 

"I shouldn't have stripped out that attack code. What if he can't even make the decision if he wants to protect himself?" Dutch says after a few moments.

Chuck bites his lip, watching the code scroll down the screen. "You didn’t know at the time, right? And it’s hard to tell what’s code and what’s...everything else." 

All that Dutch knows is that he doesn't want that happening again. He knocks on Roth's shell to get his attention. "Hey, buddy. I'm going to take out that protection protocol. I should have done it ages ago, and I don't want you doing that again, okay?" Dutch says, resting his chin on Roth's case.

Roth's body tilts to the side, as if cocking his head. The noise he makes is definitely a negative. 

"It's for your own good, man," Dutch says, "Shouldn't change anything."

Roth buzzes dismissively, sounding every bit like the static-voiced, stubborn bot that kept on showing up at his door. 

"Hey, Dutch. I think he's cool with it, maybe?" Chuck says tentatively, patting Roth. Roth doesn't move from Dutch's lap, but one of his tendrils sneaks out to wind around Chuck's fingers.

Dutch sighs. He can’t help but think of an old story that his mom read to him when he was little, something about a boy prince and a fox and responsibility. He wonders if this is what his parents felt like when they let him go. 

Roth's fingers sneak out and catch up his airbrush. The tough sinew of his appendage is dry and velvety, and he wraps Dutch's hand around the brush.

"Yeah. I got it, dude. Really cool paint job, coming up. You are so vain, you know that?" 

Roth chirps cheekily. 

Laser eyes, Texas suggests, undeterred when Dutch points out that bots already have laser eyes. He ends up painting a big eyeball to satisfy Texas; it actually looks pretty cool, and Roth seems happy with it. 

Dutch leaves Roth with Julie and Mike while he fills up his paint cartridge, and when he comes back, Mike and Julie look kind of sheepish and Roth has a pink skull-patterned bow perched on his casing. It's ludicrously adorable. Dutch adjusts the bow so that it sits straighter. 

Chuck helps him with the final touches, his big hands carefully touching up the lines, the tip of his tongue sticking out in concentration.

Roth curls his fingers around Dutch's ankle, his engine purring softly, and Dutch breathes easier.


End file.
